Technology alone is not enough to adequately support young people to gain access to digital economic opportunities. What is needed is human support and human social capital. The African Coding Network innovation was inspired to leverage the best of both: digital technology that inspires scale, supplemented by human support and networks.

The African Coding Network provides African youth with end-to-end support to get on a learning-to-earning pathway in the fast-growing digital and technology economies. We bring together three key stakeholder networks—high potential youth, education partners and economic opportunities—to establish a shared-value ecosystem between the supply of talent and the digital skills demand.

With a focus on underrepresented youth, we address both Africa’s inequality gap and skills in order to offer accessible learning to earning digital pathways at no cost to young people to accelerate their careers in tech.

Addressing big challenges through human-centered design and strategy

Like many organizations, our South Africa–based organization was challenged by the COVID pandemic which forced us to shift our in-person training program to a fully remote one. This shift provided an opportunity, one underpinned by the promise of online education as a way to democratize access to high-quality training.

We asked ourselves: by leveraging online technology, could our high-quality, in-demand digital and tech training programs be delivered to young people anywhere in Africa, at a reduced cost and greater scale?

The answer is yes. So far, more than 40,000 women have been encouraged to take their first steps into a digital career through our ongoing #WomenInTech challenges in partnership with Yoma, a UNICEF-driven innovation that creates a youth agency marketplace linking youth to education, impact and employment opportunities.

Through private sector partnerships, we’ve created free access to more than 3,800 high-quality online learning opportunities developed by Google, Meta and Amazon Web Service. Supplementing with local support, we’ve guided learners from over 10 African countries, of which about 80% are female, to complete over 100 hours of training to earn a professional certificate.

Skills gained in the program link directly to global job demand, be that formal employment (local or international) or freelancing and entrepreneurship. On completion of training, select youth join paid work experience or get entrepreneurship support.

To make this truly scalable, local African NGOs or training providers can join the African Coding network and gain access to license, systems and process, supplemented management capacity and economic opportunities. In return, they offer local support to young people in their communities.

Attracting global partners to address digital skills and gaps across sub-Saharan Africa

Being named a finalist in the African Union “Innovating Education in Africa” program has been critical to showcase credibility with partners—be that a young person looking for opportunities, multilaterals seeking innovations for impact or employers looking to invest in their talent pipeline.

In addition, we have been incredibly proud to play a small but valuable part in the African Union’s Agenda 2063. We stand side by side with the African Union and other education innovations in working toward the common goal of a prosperous, fair and equal Africa.

We’re expanding multiple aspects of our innovation, looking at key aggregate networks, youth, education partners as well as economic opportunities:

1. Growing our network of local education partners and supporting them to deliver blended in-person/online education programs. An exciting part of this effort is employing alumni to support the next wave of young people, supplementing the management capacity of local partners.
2. Growing our digital and tech pathways by bringing on own learning partners and earning(employer) partners including SAP, the University of Cape Town and the European Business University.
3. Growing our network of youth to link to opportunities leveraging Yoma.

Technology plays an important role in Africa's development, but alone it can be a dangerous narrative

Technology isn’t going to be the silver bullet for Africa’s development, and the narrative of “leapfrogging” can sometimes provide a naive and misguided optimism. Modern innovations are often technological, but there is only so much a smart piece of software and hardware can do.

I hope that heads of states and world leaders take seriously the role that is critical of the state which is to develop Africa’s infrastructure. Only on the back of robust infrastructure can technology innovation function.

Connect with us on Facebook, on Instagram or via e-mail.